Marion Davies started showing her talent with the very first film “Runaway Romany” written by herself and directed by her brother-in-law George. W. Lederer in 1917, and what soon followed were three comedies which made her an actress with ample wealth and fame; a recognizable figure on the silver screen. Her success was stable for the course of silent pictures, but the coming of sound in cinema made Marion a nervous figure, as she had never overcome a problem of childhood stutter.

Kirsten Dunst portrayed Davies in The Cat’s Meow,which is based on the rumored affairs she is said to have had with Chaplin. It is a play about the three men she had in her life Ince, Chaplin and Hearst. Davies is also rumored to have been the inspiration for the Susan Alexander character portrayed in Orson Welle’s Citizen Kane,which was based loosely on Hearst’s life. The True Story of Marion Davies{2001} premiered on the Turner Classic Movies is an absolute good watch.

Charlie Chaplin is said to have been persuading Marion to leave William Hearst but Davies continued to stick around with her first lover till his death in 1951, a married man, who refuted to get himself a divorce so that he could be married to Davies; after ten weeks of which she married her husband Horace Brown who resembled her first man. Chaplin made a rare cameo appearance in Davies 1928 film Show People, and by some accounts continued to have a fling with her till 1931.

Marion could have just been forgotten as a Broadway chorus girl in no time had it not been for the sponsorship of Hearst productions .